


When You're Older

by mybeanieandme



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Comfort No Hurt, Existential Questions, M/M, Nicolo "everything happens for a reason" di genova, confident defiance of gods, soft naps, we're too old for angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25570984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybeanieandme/pseuds/mybeanieandme
Summary: Nile has many questions for her new immortal family. With the revelation that Andy can, and may within a lifetime, die, she wonders how the other members of the team feel about their mortality and their relationship to it and each other.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 27
Kudos: 366





	When You're Older

**Author's Note:**

> There are many fics that ponder who will die first in the immortal husbands pairing. This is my take on that.

A month into their arrangement with Copley, Nile was settling into life well with the group. She did not replace Booker, she found her own spot and nestled in quite at home. But there were questions she had, and she although she had been asking them, some were more difficult than others. 

She plucked up her courage one day and went looking for Nicky. An exhaustive search was unnecessary as he was usually in one of three places. Today it was the couch. He was reading something in a language Nile didn’t recognized. She sat opposite him in an impossibly large chair. 

“Do you ever worry-?” Nile started to ask but the question lingered too long as she stumbled with the finish.

“No,” Nicky shrugged simply, he looked up from his book, the motion disturbing Joe who was napping on his shoulder.

“You don’t know what I was going to ask,” Nile told him. 

Nicky shrugged one shoulder this time and put his bookmark in, he had a feeling this would be a long conversation. Having a new undying person in the group reminded Nicky, quite fondly, of interacting with a two year old. The “why” questions that never ended because most did not have answers. Nile was more inquisitive in ways that Booker had not been. She had questions about art and history. He and Joe delighted in every answer they could give her. Nicky was hoping this might be one of those but it did not sound like it.

“You never worry about anything then?” Nile asked. She leaned forward a little from her spot on a plush chair. The size of the chair somehow made her look even younger and part of Nicky felt his 900+ years.

He shook his head. “I worry about some things. It is impossible not to sometimes. The way were all taken- being captured- and you- there are always worries.”

“I worry you?” She asked, unsure how to take that.

“About you,” Joe chimed in.

Nile and Nicky both turned their faces to Joe. 

Joe and Nicky shared a soft quiet exchange in Italian and Joe curled in tighter to him. “We all worry about you, Nile,” Joe’s voice was still sleepy. “When we first dreamed of you- it was Nicky that made Andy go find you.”

“That is an oversimplification,” Nicky held up his hand to protest, but once it came into view Joe reached for it and pulled it close to him to kiss. This made Nicky smile at him, eyes so damn full of love Nile felt like she was interrupting.

“But you don’t worry about-,” Nile seemed to be fixated on something. “Andy?”

Nicky furrowed his brows a little in confusion. “Of course we worry about Andy.”

“I didn’t mean it like that-,” Nile tried to backtrack, damn why was it so hard to ask what she meant to ask.

“You mean- do we worry about mortality?” Joe moved his arm around Nicky’s waist as he slowly melted into his everything.

“Yes,” Nile nodded abruptly, grateful Joe had seen through to her true question.

The two men exchanged a look, and then Nicky shrugged once more as Joe closed his eyes again. The nonchalance in the answer was almost infuriating. But Nile was too new to understand how long the arc of history really was.

“That’s it?” She wasn’t letting it go as she mimicked Nicky’s shrug.

“There is nothing more to say. We are not worried,” Nicky chuckled at her imitation.

“You’re not worried about spending one second apart?” She pressed.

“We do but we do not dwell,” Nicky told her. “When it is time it is time. There will be nothing we can do. Although at this point we have been together so long it feels like our souls are truly inseparable.”

Joe lifted his nose to press it to the pulse point beneath Nicky’s jaw. “If Nicky dies before me I do not worry,” Joe sounded so certain Nile was almost confused, as if he knew a secret to their power no one else did. “I know if he dies I would be so heartsick there is no way I could go on and thus cease to exist as well.”

“You can’t know that-,” Nile shook her head.

But Joe did know, she could see it plain as day in his tried eyes. She would have recognized it in the expression Joe had kneeling over Nicky’s body when he’d been shot straight through the back of the head. But she had not been there to see. The anguish alone was enough to despair. She was too young to know, too young to feel the years of it. Too new to know you always worry any moment would be your last, somewhere deep down inside you. But you do not hold onto it. You held onto him while you had him.

“If Joe goes first-“ Nile started to ask.

“I dare God to try,” Nicky had moved his arm protectively around a once more sleeping Joe. There was something in his voice Nile had not heard before, some defiance that was anchored in a bedrock nearly a millennia deep. 

Nile sat back, she supposed she had her answer then as unsatisfying as it was. But maybe it wasn’t an answer she could understand, maybe like the words in Nicky’s book it was something new she had to learn. She sighed in mild frustration and found Nicky smiling placatingly at her. 

“I am sorry if it is not the answer you were expecting,” his voice was softer now as Joe slipped into a deeper sleep.

Nile shook her head. “I’m starting to feel like there are certain questions that are bigger than all of this- and a lot of it is like my mom used to say- I’ll understand it when I’m older.”

Nicky’s face broke into a wide infectious grin and Nile had to smile too. “Your mother is right. One day you will be much older than everyone else. And you will know answers that might not be universally true- but they will be true for you. And that is all that matters.”

That gave Nile something to hold onto at least for now. She sat for a moment watching Joe sleep. He looked so peaceful and contented and her heart understood a little better how they could be so sure in the face of vast uncertainty.

“Will you tell me more about Gauguin over lunch?” Nile asked next.

Joe snorted, he was definitely more awake now. “That prick,” he huffed against Nicky’s chest. 

“We would love to,” Nicky chuckled.


End file.
